The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Seriously, who are you? – I’m just an ordinary, average conservative guy with a face for radio and a voice for print who decided to put his rants and epic posts up on the web.

Who is Shoebox? – Shoebox is my co-blogger extraordinaire. If you want to know more about him, go to his bio page.

Why do you do a blog? – Because wood got too expensive to keep on breaking. Seriously, I need to vent every so often, lest Mt. Vesuvius show up in southern Milwaukee County and start laying pyroclastic clouds all over the place. I don’t want that, you don’t want that, and Ringo definitely doesn’t want that.

What’s up with the language? – At times, I’ve embraced my inner Ace of Spades/Rottweiler, hoisted the black flag, and started biting off throats. What the fuck kind of stupid-ass question is that anyhow? Besides, I usually try to hide the expletives, usually through the phonetic alphabet, the <expletive deleted> “tag”, or the “more” tag available in WordPress.

Speaking of that tag, how do you get it, and the related </sarcasm> tag, to be visible? Every time I try that, it disappears on me. – Places like WordPress do attempt to convert everything contained between a < and a > into HTML code. Therefore, you need to type &lt; (the HTML character code for <) to get the <.

So, why WordPress on your own domain? I know you used to have a Blogger blog. – Blogger had a serious chunking episode a couple years ago. I didn’t like any of the other “free” options (wordpress.com didn’t exist at that point), and I had a domain that was basically unused (I was using it as an ISP-independent storage place for some photos). At that point, the host was saying they were compatible with WordPress.

As for WordPress.com, I don’t like the absolute ban that it (and indeed, the entire WordPress MU system, at least in stock form) has on JavaScript. Other than that, it’s a nice place to be.

So, why did you move again? – That host was less-than-completely compatible with WordPress, especially when it’s hosted on a subdomain, like I had the blog at that point. Further, it charged too much for what I was getting.

You mentioned something about that theme of yours being widgetized, but when I go to Mike Little’s site, he doesn’t have a widgetized version. What’s that deal? – Actually, Mike does have a widgetized version (2.7) out now, which is what I’m using. He also did a few other changes to make it WP2.7-compliant. I still have a modified blogroll widget (so I can have a randomized blogroll) and a modified search widget (I don’t like the stock one). I also modified the center look somewhat. The original answer is archived and struck through below.

I did do some hacking of Journalized 2 (Beta 2 to be exact) to get it fully WP2.1/2.2-compliant. Mike does (or at least should) have the base copy of what I did (there are a couple of other mods I did for myself, including the random blogroll). I can’t speak for him, but I don’t feel like doing any kind of support.

As a side note, I’ve discovered that the modified version (I’ve called it Journalized 2.2) does work in a WordPress MU environment. It’s what I’m using at my WP MU Marblehead Regiment blog. Another side note; I don’t use tags, so that’s why I don’t call it fully-2.3 compliant.

Who or what is the Emergency Blogging System – That is one of my few masterpieces. The move to WordPress allowed me to delay making posts visible, very useful when I’m out of town or otherwise away from the keyboard. I didn’t feel it right to have those posts with me as an author, so I dipped into the past for the name of that “robot” (no, it’s not quite a sockpuppet; it ought to be crystal-clear that’s me). As a side note, if either a current or future guest-blogger requests some sort of anonymity, I reserve the right to change this answer and give them access to the EBS.

Speaking of guest-bloggers, why them? – In April 2007, I felt that I had run out of material I could push off on the EBS. I put out an open call, and the original 3, Fred, Patrick and Aaron, answered the bell. Leslie asked to live-blog the Defending the American Dream summit here as her regular blog is much more focused on a single issue (specifically, open government records). I sort of encouraged Shoebox to start blogging because he was coming up with some brilliant things in the debate liveblogs, and since he isn’t quite ready to open up his own blog, he’s starting out here. He became a co-blogger some time back.

Silent E came into the picture a bit later, partly because I’ve guest-blogged at his place, and partly because I helped him move his blog to a different host. Big G is the first guest-blogger recruited by Shoebox.

So, how do I get a hold of you? – You may e-mail me at norunnyeggs – at – norunnyeggs – dot – com, or you may mail Shoebox at shoebox – at – norunnyeggs – dot – com

Why the unfriendly way to put up e-mail addresses? – I fucking hate spam. Most bots don’t know what to do with that, while most humans do.

What’s the deal with the “revisions and extensions”? – That’s my personal, ongoing hat tip to The Wall Street Journal. It covers both updates and corrections, and since everybody says “update” and “correction”, I decided to be different.

Why do you usually put your hat tips up top? – I want them to be recognized. Burying the hat tip doesn’t exactly do that recognition justice.